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Like the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian, which resides just a couple of blocks away on the Mall, the Newseum suffers from the fact that curatorial power is invested in the home team. Indian tribes — and not museum professionals — ultimately got to decide what to place in the hall designed to honor them. Independent tribes of self-glorifying journalists didn’t choose what to stuff inside the Newseum, but they didn’t have to, because the organization was all too ready to do their bidding. You don’t think News Corp. and the Sulzbergers would lend their names and money to an enterprise that would sink a shiv into the press, do you?
— Jack Shafer, writing on the reopening of the Newseum for Slate.
